Part of the confidence and tone of certainty about predetermination and free will seems to come from ambiguity that conflicts and perplexes. A Calvinist will talk to you with a look of absolute conviction. It's as if he's bluffing. He knows something you don't know and you can't see. You're looking, you want to know like he does, but you just don't see it.
Some people talk about a kind of faith not anchored in scripture, which is mere fideism. I've had that charge made against me on the doctrine of preservation. Calvinism takes fideistic leaps in the dark.
A fairly recent article by Tom Hicks in the Foundation Journal (Fall 2016, Issue 106) he explicates Robert Shaw in his 1845 The Reformed Faith: An Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith (p. 81) in writing:
The doctrine that God eternally and unconditionally decreed all future things necessarily follows from the fact that God is independent, all knowing, and unchangeable, which is what chapter 2 of the confession (WCF) teaches. Since God is independent, it follows that His decree cannot depend upon anything in the future or anything outside of Himself. Since God knows all things, it follows that God must have first decreed all things. And since God is unchangeable, it follows that God must have an unchangeable decree at the foundation of all that He does.
They say that God decrees all future things. So what do you want to know? Does God decree sin? Does man choose to sin? These are good questions, the answers of which seem contradictory. It is at the very root of Calvinism. You take away these foundational doctrines and you've got a different system. What matters, wouldn't we ask, is what does the Bible say? The right position takes into consideration all of scripture according to the plain meaning of the text.
Listening to the late Calvinist R. C. Sproul explain the Arminian view of free will, he said Arminians came to their position to save or rescue God from a reputation of unloving and harsh, an uncaring manipulator. He didn't provide any basis for this contention. It is a typical kind of argument that I hear in discussions. What if Calvinism was a pendulum swing from Roman Catholicism, the latter teaching man can work his way? Could Calvinism have swung too far toward an unscriptural view of free will to ensure a position of salvation by grace with all for the glory of God?
In another clip by Sproul, he compares someone who believes in free will to an atheist. He explains that this is because if God is not sovereign, then God is not God. There is an informal logical fallacy here, called equivocation, because it's a matter of a definition of the term, sovereignty. Is sovereignty the understanding of the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF), chapter three, paragraph one?
God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
The London Baptist Confession says almost identical words. The authors said "God . . . ordain(s) whatsoever comes to pass." This echoes an interpretation of Ephesians 1:11 to which I've referred already in this series:
In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.
"Ordain whatsoever comes to pass" seems to match "worketh all things after the counsel of his own will." Do those mean the same thing? I don't think so. "Worketh" in Ephesians 1:11 is energeo. BDAG takes into consideration all its usage and says it means: "to bring something about through use of capability." Does that compare to "ordain"? The Universal World Dictionary in 1706 says ordain means "to command or enjoin, to appoint or design."
When I look at the meaning of words, I'm considering the history of the doctrine. What were they saying, when they said "ordain" in the WCF and LBC? I'm looking at old dictionaries around the same time to have a better sense of what they meant. However, a modern dictionary says that "ordain" in the religious sense means "to destine or predestine, to order or command" in the context that its being used.
Working all things according to the counsel of his will in Ephesians 1:11 is very similar to working all things together for good in Romans 8:28. God is not working all things period. He is working in a way or manner that all things fulfill God's purpose, which is the understanding of "counsel." Working in that sense is not the same as ordaining all things. What I'm describing fits much better with the rest of scripture also.
A. A. Hodge was the principal of Princeton Seminary from 1878 to 1886 and wrote A Commentary on the Westminster Confession. He amazes the convoluted ends he goes to reason that God controls or determines every single event that occurs in the entire universe at every moment. He writes:
The plan of God comprehends and determines all things and events of every kind that come to pass. (1) This is rendered certain from the fact that all God's works of creation and providence constitute one system. No event is isolated, either in the physical or moral world, either in heaven or on earth. All of God's supernatural revelations and every advance of human science conspire to make this truth conspicuously luminous. Hence the original intention which determines one event must also determine every other event related to it, as cause, condition, or consequent, direct and indirect, immediate and remote. Hence, the plan which determines general ends must also determine even the minutest element comprehended in the system of which those ends are parts. The free actions of free agents constitute an eminently important and effective element in the system of things. If the plan of God did not determine events of this class, he could make nothing certain, and his government of the world would be made contingent and dependent, and all his purposes fallible and mutable.
With the extent that Hodge goes with his explanation of God determining "all things and events of every kind that come to pass" and the comprehensiveness of it, he still writes:
It must be remembered, however, that the purpose of God with respect to the sinful acts of men and wicked angels is in no degree to cause the evil, nor to approve it, but only to permit the wicked agent to perform it, and then to overrule it for his own most wise and holy ends.
Herein lies a contradiction. God does not contradict Himself. Either they are both true or they are both false. I understand that God does not ordain anyone to sin. I fully comprehend Hodge's unwillingness to say that God determines evil. The WCF and LBC say the same. However, the comprehensive determinism of the first general statement clashes with the following statements.
James (1:13) writes:
Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.
Why would someone say he's tempted of God? From where would that thought or conception arise? If the sovereignty of God is deterministic, then God could be blamed by someone for his sin. God determines things, yes, but not all things. That should be in the general statement. James 1:13 sounds like, man has choices. God can't be blamed for sin, because man chooses to sin. God determines His will, His purpose, but not everything, but it's also His will that man has a choice, a free will.
Thomas Boston (1676-1732) wrote a commentary on the Shorter Catechism, which is a shorter catechism of the Westminster Confession. He writes:
I am to explain the nature of a decree. The text calls it a purpose, a will. For God to decree is to purpose and fore-ordain, to will and appoint that a thing shall be or not be. And such decrees must needs be granted, seeing God is absolutely perfect, and therefore nothing can come to pass without his will; seeing there is an absolute and necessary dependence of all things and persons on God as the first cause. . . . He worketh all things, says the text. God has decreed whatsoever comes to pass; and nothing comes to pass but what he has decreed to come to pass.
Later in the same commentary, however, Boston writes:
God decreed the permission of sin for great and glorious ends. It is true, sin in its own nature has no tendency to any good end. If it end in any good, it is from the overruling providence of God, and that infinite divine skill that can bring good out of evil, as well as light out of darkness. . . . God decrees the permission of sin, as above explained, yet is not the author of sin.
The decree of God seems to allow for permission even in its definition. If anything is permitted by God and not all determined by Him, what is the basis for that exception in the decree? This is again where Calvinism conflicts and perplexes. Nothing comes to pass but what God has decreed to come to pass, but regarding sin, God merely permits it, not determines it.
Conflict and perplexity revolves around the compatibility of comprehensive or total determinism and permission only to do evil. If God decrees or ordains all things, which means predetermine all of them, why did God not also ordain the thoughts or intentions of Joseph's brothers in Genesis 50:20?
But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.
Either God used their evil thoughts against Joseph or He ordained them. If He didn't ordain them, only permitted them, and then used them, God doesn't determine all things. If God doesn't determine all things, then why believe that He determines or ordains who goes to Hell or who goes to Heaven?
God is sovereign. He determines what He wills. In His sovereignty, however, scripture reads that God willed or wanted free will for man. Genesis 50:20 offers a good example of this, since Joseph's brothers chose their evil thinking or intentions, but there are many others.
(To Be Continued)
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